Tuesday, March 20, 2018
This is
what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord of
Heaven’s Armies: “I am the First and the
Last; there is no other God. Who is like
me? Let him step forward and prove to
you his power. Let him do as I have done
since ancient times when I established a people and explained its future. Do not tremble; do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim my purposes for you long
ago? You are my witnesses—is there any
other God? No! There is no other
Rock—not one!”
Isaiah 44:6-8(NLT)
Three times[2]
in the book that bears Isaiah’s name Almighty God delclares that He alone is first
and last. As an echo we hear
the same phrase three times[3]
in John’s Revelation, the final time near the very end of Scripture:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and
the End.”
Revelation 22:13(NLT)
There are several significant
attachments to this phrase, all of them so important to our theology…why and
what we believe about God. He is first
and last in the sense that He is the Creator, but also
sustainer. He was before and He holds it
all together, and will be there to restore His creation to glory at the end of
time. Paul gives us this synopsis:
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is
supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the
heavenly realms and on earth. He made
the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms,
rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds
all creation together.
Colossians
1:15-17(NLT)
Another
significance of this phrase first and last is the idea of
preeminence; God was not only the first in the sense of time, but also in the matter
of imporance. As Isaiah records, God isn’t
just the most important among all the gods you might hear about; Jehovah is the
ONLY
God.
One other thought
about first and last, which sums up why we can hardly claim we
comprehend the vastness of the nature and character of this unseen
eternal One, is that He is before time and space, and
exists above that realm in which we humans dwell. As such, God knows the beginnings and endings
of all things. It is like our universe
is one very long parade, and God has a drone’s perspective of the banners at
the beginning of the parade, and the sweepers after the procession…all at the
same time.
For You Today
Lent is that dark time inbetween.
It is when we turn a corner from Jesus demonstrating his power over what
He created, magnificent miracles and heartening sermons…to the shadow of a
cross. In this 40 days of wandering in
the wilderness of inbetween, it is important to remember that we are within
time and space. We cannot yet comprehend
what life is like above this realm…we can only imagine, as John wrote:
Dear friends, we are
already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.
1 John 3:2(NLT)
This Lenten
promise reminds us that He not only was first, creating and breathing
life into us; God is also the last, standing ready to
extend that life with Him in eternity.
In Lent…inbetween…it
is enough to know that we will know!
You chew on that as you hit the
Rocky Road; have a blessed day.
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